Why Speak Up for Health and Safety?
Communication is the respiratory system of an organization’s health and safety program.
The best laid plans and procedures for keeping people safe will not be effective if workers and supervisors are unwilling to use their voices to identify hazards, ask questions, or raise concerns. Across all industries, many workplaces struggle with the challenge of people fearing to admit they don’t know something or acknowledge something they believe is unsafe. The same goes for people who feel harassed or intimidated by someone but choose not to report it. This begs the question: How does silence at work that could lead to preventable harm become the preferred choice? The answer is the workplace has low psychological safety, and the people choosing to remain silent feel it is in their own best interest. In this context, silence is dangerous, and people not using their voices can be hazardous to their health as well as the health of others around them.
So, what is psychological safety? Professor Amy Edmondson from the Harvard Business School is the author of “The Fearless Organization,” a book that highlights evidence-based research and case studies demonstrating the value of creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, growth, and innovation. In her book, Edmondson describes psychological safety as,
A climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves. More specifically, when people have psychological safety at work, they feel comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution. They are confident that they can speak up and won’t be humiliated, ignored, or blamed.”
This description reveals the inherent interpersonal fears a person can face before speaking up. People are consciously and subconsciously calculating the risk of appearing ignorant, disruptive, or incompetent in nearly every workplace interaction. When invited to give an opinion or provided the opportunity to ask questions, “we all go through an implicit decision making process, weighing the benefits and costs of speaking up” before deciding whether to speak at all and, if so, to what degree of honesty (Edmondson). This
calculus also applies to admitting mistakes or providing feedback. Oftentimes, people are vulnerable to a logic of self-protection
where silence becomes their default defence. In other words, they are inclined to think there’s a higher chance of a negative outcome by saying the wrong thing as opposed to saying nothing. Edmondson’s own research has uncovered a list of implicit theories of voice, which she describes as “beliefs about when it is and isn’t appropriate to speak to higher ups in an organization.” The trends of these taken-for-granted rules for voice at work were found to be:
- Don’t criticize something the boss may have helped create.
- Don’t speak unless you have solid data.
- Don’t speak up if the boss’s boss is present.
- Don’t speak up in a group about anything negative about the work to prevent the boss from losing face.
- Speaking up brings career consequences.
This instinct to remain silent is powerful and erodes the integrity of an organization’s health and safety program. It can also lead to other negative outcomes, from poor productivity and organizational growth to blunted innovation and creative outcomes. Productions in arts and entertainment require a lot of knowledge-sharing and collaboration from a wide range of expertise. As Edmonson writes,
Psychological safety sets the stage for a more honest, more challenging, more collaborative, and thus also more effective work environment.”
When compared to the self-protective approach of remaining silent, it becomes clear that this individual-oriented goal can stifle one’s commitment or contributions to the shared goals of their groups (i.e., their team, their department, and the general workforce). Sustainable growth for the industry also depends on training new and young workers, meanwhile fear is scientifically proven to inhibit learning by impairing “analytic thinking, creative insight and problem solving” (Edmondson). These same inhibitions may reduce the value of hiring the most acclaimed professionals in any given field. The brightest minds will not share the innovative ideas that come to them during projects when they feel psychologically unsafe to do so, which diminishes the return on investment of hiring them for their ingenuity.
Organizational leaders, such as supervisors, managers, and employers, can take immediate steps to help instill a culture of voice within their groups. Edmondson recommends these three interrelated practices to do so by methodically enhancing psychological safety:
Setting the stage
Set expectations to frame the work in terms of failure, uncertainty, and interdependence for clarity about why using one’s voice matters to the group. Identifying what’s at stake, why it’s important, and for whom will emphasize the purpose of speaking up.
Inviting participation
Acknowledging gaps in the steps
taken or plans for work ahead models situational humility to others in lower ranks. This followed with asking good questions and modelling active listening will demonstrate meaningful inquiry and inspire confidence that voice is welcome.
Responding productively
After eliciting responses, express
appreciation by acknowledging
the contributions to the team and
giving thanks for the value added.
In other contexts, this can also mean destigmatizing failure by looking forward toward progress, offering to help get there, and collaborating on the decision for next steps.
A culture of silence can smother the most robust and well-designed health and safety programs, potentially making the difference between life and death for workers. In the aftermath of a serious accident, nothing can be more disheartening than having a group of witnesses admit they thought something was wrong before the incident but chose not to say anything. The provincial regulations make it clear that all workers in BC have a responsibility to report hazards in their workplaces, including those to do with harassment and impairment; however, those in the chain of command need to take greater responsibility for building and reinforcing psychological safety at all levels of the organization to breathe life into a culture of voice.
Source: https://fearlessorganizationscan.com/the-fearlessorganization by Professor Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School
